This is the last project my 4th graders dove into this year. We learned a lot about Georges Seurat and his pointillist technique.
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
"Georges Seurat (December 2, 1859 - March 29, 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting.
Seurat was born into a very rich family in Paris. His father, Antoine Chrysostom Seurat, was a legal official and a native of Champagne; his mother, Ernestine Faivre, was Parisian.
Georges Seurat first studied art with Justin Lequiene, a sculptor. Seurat attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879." Taken from http://www.georgesseurat.org/
Pointulism is a technique of painting similar to impressionism. For this technique, dots or dashes of pure color are juxtaposed so that from a distance they blend creating a new color. Take a look at the color wheel below!
Materials: 12x18 white paper, watercolors, pencil, crayola markers, example photos of hot air balloons
Vocabulary: George Seurat, pointillism, shape, outline, watercolor wash, primary colors, secondary colors, foreground, middleground, background.
After learning about Seurat and the pointillism technique, we looked at images of hot air balloons. On a 12x18 white piece of paper, we drew 5-7 hot air balloons in pencil. We started with the largest/closest balloons in the foreground first, then some medium sized balloons in the middleground, and very small balloons in the background. We also drew a ground line in the background..
For the next class we watercolor washed the sky and ground. Once it was dry, we began the pointillism technique with regular crayola.
The bad news was that we ran out of time to finish these.
The good news is, most kids have crayola markers at home and could finish them there :)
I wonder if any of them did finish them at home. I hope I have the opportunity to do this project with another class. I can only imagine how pretty these would look as complete works!
